There’s more to benefits than salary and health insurance. Here’s everything you should consider as you’re looking to attract and retain talent.
What Benefits Must Small Businesses Legally Offer Employees?
Starting a business is full discoveries and learning experiences. Once you hire your first employee, you discover there are a variety of rules and regulations you do have to follow, including the benefits you’re required to provide your employees.
To be clear: by “benefits,” we don’t just mean value-add perks that help you recruit and retain top-level employees (like a keg of cold-brew in the break room). We’re talking about benefits mandated by state and local governments, like paying into unemployment insurance.
So which benefits are optional and which are you legally required to provide?
Which are mandated by the state and which by the federal government?
Read on for a guide to make sure you’re offering the right benefits to your employees and staying in compliance with the laws where you live.
How to Offer Benefits as a Small Business
While we can all agree that there are many benefits to working at a small business (avoiding bureaucracy, trying new things, knowing everyone in your company), the most important benefits are the benefits benefits. I’m talking health insurance. Retirement plans. Paid leave options. Meaningful stuff.
So how can you, a small-business owner, provide these kinds of benefits and still have the time and money to run your business? And maybe more to the point: how can you provide benefits that are actually competitive with what your team would get at a much larger company ?
What is a PEO and Why Do You Need One?
A professional employer organization (PEO) helps manage your HR operations, so your business can run smoother. PEOs handle payroll, provide employee benefits, HR software systems, expertise and much more.
A PEO is a Professional Employer Organization. We’re not all the same, but generally, we’re HR experts who help small-business owners save time, worry less, and access better employee benefits for a better price.
Our experts take care of four main areas:
Payroll & HR Administration: We handle payroll, paperwork (like employee onboarding and filing forms by important deadlines), and other admin duties that eat away at your free time.
Compliance: This includes workers’ comp, exempt and nonexempt status, workplace policies, and other legal requirements that keep you up at night.
Benefits: We help SMBs offer big-business benefits plans by pooling our clients’ employees for increased buying and negotiating power. Translation: better benefits at a lower cost.
Infrastructure: Whether you’re 5 or 500 employees we provide HRIS systems, processes and procedures to help your HR ops run smoothly.